Mike Kern, Author of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Category Archives: Space Cantina

Hey everyone, just a quick update. Chapter 17 will run a little late this week. Likely it won’t go up until Sunday. I had a bunch of work and packing to do this week and I never quite got around to giving it the attention it deserves. So look for it Sunday!

For a while now I’ve had a good buffer of chapters in case I was really busy one week or simply couldn’t get it edited in time, but unfortunately that buffer ran out last week. I’d hoped to get more chapters done this past weekend but it just didn’t happen. I’m leaving tomorrow (Wednesday) for PAX East so it looks like Chapter 8 will have to wait a week. Sorry guys!

If anyone is going to PAX East, send me a message on Twitter or something. This will be my very first PAX, though not my first convention. For years now I’ve attended DragonCon in Atlanta pretty regularly. Lately, it’s become impossible to get a room for it. So this year my wife and I decided to go to something different. We’re both pretty big video game nerds so this seemed like a natural place for us to go. We just never did.

I’m heading up with a friend of mine from a previous job. He and I always talked about going but I never could find the time, or I was low on money, or I was getting married, etc etc. But this year! This is the year!

And it’s snowing. Well. I won’t let that stop me. Wish us luck!

If anyone is in the area and wants to say hi, once again use that twitter.

It also pushes me to make the best story I can. People are reading this story, and some are even enjoying it. For the first time, I have people waiting to reading stuff. That’s a very freaky thing. It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to bring entertainment to even one person every week. So for everyone out there reading Dark Winter every week, and even those who give it a look and decide it’s not for them, thank you.

I will do my best to give you an awesome story.

Behind the Name of Dark Winter

Dark Winter is a work of fiction. It’s Fan Fiction, actually, inspired by the H1Z1 Zombie Apocalypse game by Sony Online Entertainment. There’s been some speculation about the name and I thought I’d talk about it here.

The term “Dark Winter” comes from a mocked scenario by the US Government in 2001. It simulated a bioweapon attack on a major US city using a highly virulent form of Smallpox. The scenario has the outbreak occur on Black Friday at an international airport. Operation Dark Winter was run to determine our readiness in the event of such an attack. Sadly, our healthcare system was found woefully ill prepared for such an event. You can read about it online at Wikipedia or wherever you get your information. It’s a pretty fascinating read.

The upcoming game “The Division” also uses this scenario for the background to their game. I used the term “Dark Winter” here as more of a metaphor, though I did have the outbreak in Mount Hope occur on Black Friday.

History! Yay!

Anyway, thanks for reading everyone. I should have Part 7 ready later this week, barring hold ups. I’ve had kind of a busy week so it might not happen on Friday. We’ll see. If it doesn’t, I apologize and will instead post it as soon as I can. I don’t want to publish a half-assed story.

So it’s been a while hasn’t it? No, I haven’t stopped writing or dropped off the face of the Earth or anything like that. This new job has really crunched my time, first with launch of our game and now with an upcoming move to consoles, I doubt it’ll lessen anytime soon. The free time I do have I spend on my novel, penning adventures for my tabletop RPG group, or simply decompressing in front of my computer with a good, fun video game.

When I started this blog, I wanted to give myself a schedule. I wanted to challenge myself to write to it all the time, build an audience and get myself out there. I’m not sure I really succeeded but it really taught me a few things about time management. It also taught me my limits. It gave me some great stories though, and I met lots of cool people.

So what is this message? No, I’m not walking away from this blog. I’m actually considering starting up a new story in the same vein as Icarus. By that I mean, journal-entry type stories that are short and post regularly. I have a rough idea for a story but no title yet. I’ll let you know when I do.

In other news, my novella 36 Hours is currently at a publisher, though no word on its progress. I also have a SciFi short story that’s out with Analog right now, though no word from them either. Hopefully one of them might be good news, but I’m more waiting for them to come back rejected so I can send them out again. The life of a writer eh?

I hope everyone’s been great. Thank you for reading my little blog over these past few years. I’ll try and give you more reasons to come back, and soon.

So it’s been quite a while since I had an update on here. Sorry about that, it’s mostly me. Okay? Really, it’s me. Not you. You were great. You ARE great and that’s what’s important. Take that with you. Hold on to it. Cherish it.

Actually I’ve been swamped at work. For those who don’t know, I work in the Video Game industry and the company I work for is ramping up for some big goals. What that means for me is a ton of overtime. I mean a ton. I didn’t know what a metric f*ckton was until now.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, oh no. I’ve been writing as much as I can possibly dare. I’m still working on that novel and it’s coming along. Novels take time though and I definitely am finding just how much. I’ve revamped and retooled parts of the story half a hundred times, but I feel like it’s finally getting there. Maybe I’ll even have something to share soon. Maybe.

What else? 36 Hours got a whole new revision (actually 2 revisions) and is currently out and about, so perhaps I’ll have something to talk about on that front soon. You never know!

Did you enjoy Hallow Hill? If you haven’t heard, FYI Weekly is running it on their site! Go check them out! Also, I want to say hello and thank you to all those wonderful folks in Perth who are reading it!

I have a new revision of Hallow Hill coming, but the world is different. Aranor is getting a big revamp, a good reskinning as it were. I can’t wait to unveil parts of it for people here soon. I’m pretty proud of it!

Hello folks, this is just a quick update to say that I’m reworking The Blood so it’ll be a few weeks until I can get it back up and going again. Until then I’m going to run a complete novella I wrote called Hallow Hill. This is a gritty fantasy novella set in the same world as The Squire and is part of the same continuum, though with different characters. This is only its second draft so if you see weird things about it, please call them out!